Notre Dame political science and peace studies alumnus Brian Klein ’08 not only served in the Peace Corps as a volunteer, he has made a career with the venerable service organization. In July 2013, Klein was appointed to a job as special assistant to Peace Corps Chief of Staff Stacy Rhodes.

Irish novelist Patrick McCabe will speak on “Irish Village Life Over 100 Years: From Brass Band to Broadband” at 4 p.m. Friday, August 30, in the Rare Books Room of the Hesburgh Library on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. McCabe’s lecture is sponsored by Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies as one of a series of events marking the 20th anniversary of the Institute’s founding.

The “Age of Martyrs” is the term of art for the earliest years of Christian history, but as Pope Francis remarked in a homily last April 15, “the age of martyrs is not yet over; even today we can say, in truth, that the Church has more martyrs now than during the first centuries.” More Christians were martyred in the 20th century than in all previous centuries combined. The lives of these remarkable men and women and the effects of their witness in the Church and the world are the subjects of the University of Notre Dame’s Saturdays with the Saints program, a series of morning talks offered on football home game days throughout the fall.

The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Africana Studies and Office of Community Relations are working together to present a yearlong community celebration of Africa and the African diaspora. The series of programs, lectures and events, called “The Africana World,” is a collaboration between local higher education institutes and community organizations.

Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters alumnus Peter Bevacqua ’93, was named Chief Executive Officer of the PGA of America in November. When Bevacqua considers the path that led him to a golf-lover’s dream job, the former English and film student credits his liberal arts education at Notre Dame, which gave him the freedom to let his career naturally take shape, he says.

Adam Asher Duker, a Ph.D. candidate in Notre Dame’s Department of History, has been awarded two major external fellowships that will allow him to continue his dissertation research this year in Paris, France. Duker received the Bourse Jeanne Marandon, a humanities fellowship awarded by the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d’Amérique, and the Huguenot Scholarship from School of Advanced Study at the University of London’s Institute for Historical Research.

“Economics is more than just the study of money or numbers or things like that,” says Pablo Muldoon ’13, a Notre Dame economics and Program of Liberal Studies major from Doylestown, Penn. “It’s more a way of looking at how human beings interact with each other, whether that be in a market setting of a firm releasing its product or the economics of the family.”

“Strong Catholic Families, Strong Catholic Youth,” an initiative that brings Catholic parishes and schools together with Catholic families to strengthen and deepen their faith, is now active in some 60 dioceses in the United States and Canada. According to those who conceived, organized and now direct this new and growing movement in youth ministry, social science research conducted by Christian Smith, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society, has been instrumental in the development of the program.

The University of Notre Dame’s Office of Campus Ministry has launched a new smartphone application accessible to all Apple and Android devices. The free app, which is available from the Apple Store and Android Market by searching “Notre Dame Daily Faith,” includes a calendar of campus liturgies, meetings of prayer groups, performances of sacred music, retreats, lectures and seminars.

“I liked the opportunity design gave me to be creative and to be a problem-solver and to think about problems logically,” says Brandon Keelean ‘13, a design major in Notre Dame’s Department of Art, Art History, and Design.

“We need to reinvent the way we think about studying war and peace,” says Patrick Regan, a professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

The University of Notre Dame’s Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO) has been designated an “international research network” by the World Education Research Association (WERA). This recognition of CREO’s leadership in the sociology of education will open new doors for international scholarly collaborations in research on educational inequality.

Theresa Rebeck ’80 says she has a playwright’s brain. The critics and her peers apparently agree: Not only is she an a Pulitzer Prize for Drama nominee and National Theatre Conference Award winner, but Rebeck was also invited to participate in the prestigious Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference in summer 2012 to develop her new play, Fool. She was one of just eight playwrights selected out of nearly 1,000 applicants, an honor she shared with another participant from Notre Dame, Anne García-Romero, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre.

A woman’s work is never done—or so the saying goes. Though women still do about two-thirds of household chores, the division of labor may depend on what her mate does for a living, according to new research by University of Notre Dame sociologist Elizabeth Aura McClintock.

The University of Notre Dame is hosting its eighth annual Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) orientation for the coming academic year, bringing foreign language teachers from 28 countries to campus August 5 through 8 for a series of workshops designed to enhance their teaching in the United States.

Whether we’re driving down the highway, scrolling our Facebook newsfeeds, or flipping through television channels, various forms of animation bombard us constantly. “Even if you don’t watch television, you see these images on your phone, your iPad, even billboards when you drive down the road,” says Donald Crafton, the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at Notre Dame.